The angels get a better view

Christmas is over. Christmas is over. We scream and we should because Christmas is over. And now, to take up space, I will regale you all with my Christmas tale. So gather round children and a story will be told, a story of intrigue and chaos and all sorts of usless crap. You will be shocked and amused as you read the story, and lied to in this useless pre-amble. You will see the face of evil and call it by name(”Phil”), and you will scream for mercy(”Stop Phil!”). Everything will come to a head, and possibly to a foot, and the earth will shake as I tell my tale. So this is Christmas, he said, months before he was stabbed in the back. Truer words were never spoken, and nicer men were never stabbed.

It all started really fucking early. Now mind you that when I say “fucking”, I am not referring to any sort of sexual act; that would entail that Christmas actually started with a bang. Instead, Christmas started with my little brother yelling at me at 7:30AM. GET UP GET UP GET UP GET UP was the call, and the call was heeded as I got up quickly and smashed my head into the upper bunk. I don’t normally sleep on bunk beds, but this being Christmas and my family being Griswold-lite, some other relatives had stolen my room for the night. So there I was, sleeping on this 900-year-old creeky “bunk bed”, that I swear will collapse one day and kill somebody, when I was awoke by a screeching toad, I then proceeded to smash my head against the upper bunk: Bring on the figgy pudding.

So there I was, 7:30AM, quite dazed and confused, and ready to kill every person around me. It was then that I looked around, at the soft snow outside, at the smiling faces of anxious children, at the lovingly decorated Christmas tree, and I stopped and I realized: It’s really fucking early. Isn’t this supposed to be a holiday? A time where we all get together and forget our troubles and just RELAX? WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING UP AT 7:30AM. I stayed up till 3:30AM Christmas eve, watching Friends reruns and generally enjoying myself, only to have all that enjoyment retroactively erased by some screeching kids yelling GET UP GET UP GET UP GET UP.

So I went down the stairs. I still couldn’t see straight, so I was pretty proud that I got down all the way. So what do my parents do when they see my ugly, tired, enraged self come down the stairs? What any other evil dungeon master would do: They take pictures. I’m sure one day I’ll bring a girl home and they’ll show them all those embarassing pictures and my life will truly be a sitcom; I just need a wacky neighbour.

Regardless, I trudged past them and on to the gifts. We still do Santa in my family, even though the youngest member is like 12 or something, but my parents have gotten pretty lazy with the whole ruse. This year, Santa left me a Dreamcast, which is pretty cool and whatnot, but it still had the pricetag on it. Apparently in this high-tech dot-com world, Santa finds it easier to just forgo the whole Elves thing and just shop at Toys R Us. In any case, I got a pretty good haul, so to speak. The Dreamcast, Crazy Taxi, Animal House VHS, the eternal Toblerone and various other candy-like substances — I love you Santa.

So then came the akward moment when you realize it’s 8AM and nothing’s going to happen for a good 4 hours. You could try to go back to sleep, but it’s a risk. Thanks to the flashbulbs and the screaming and the pounding and the whizzing sound of the remote control cars, you’re pretty awake. But you could use the sleep; you KNOW you could use the sleep. Then again, you could be too awake to go back to sleep, you could end up lying there and wondering when the hell the top bunk is going to cave in and kill you. Either way, the time passes and it comes time for more presents.

More relatives arrive, younger ones and louder ones, and of course that one obnoxious uncle that everyone seems to have. You know the one, he’s forty years old but he still acts like he’s eleven. He’s always HITTING YOU. Not painfully, but every time he walks by it’s a little smack and you wonder what the hell is wrong with this guy and then you realize that YOU take after HIM, at least partially, and you look for escape. That’s the biggest problem with these Christmas/Birthday/Holiday shindigs, there is virtually NO WAY OUT. Prisoners of War have more freedom than this — at least they get to be alone on occasion. At these functions, everywhere you turn there is MORE PEOPLE and they all want to TALK. Any girls? How’s school? How’s work? What are you gonna do with your life? Why do you want to do something so stupid with your life? And DEAR GOD do the days go SLOWER when relatives are around?

So we do the presents but now MORE people are here. And the young people get NINE THOUSAND presents each and I get FOUR. And, despite myself, I feel a little jealous. I see them with X-MEN action figures and some awesome little toy cars that go REALLY fast and I have nothing but some books and CDs and gift certificates that I’ll never use. I hate gift certificates, yet I always ask for them. To be specific, I don’t HATE the certificates themselves, I just hate using them. It seems to be law in every retail store that, when given a gift certificate, an employee will look at you like you’re an idiot. They have NEVER SEEN a gift certificate before and they assume you’re trying to use counterfeit money or something. They’ll call over their manager and they’ll talk and point at you and it’ll take 20 minutes longer than it would have if you had just paid cash. But this is beside the point, this is about Christmas.

So I get the presents and I’m happy because I got some good stuff and, more importantly, the day is nearing end. We still have dinner, but that’s not much of a chore. I’m forced to talk to my relatives, but by this point I’ve gotten used to their probing and just answer with passive one-word responses. I’ve grown numb. Everything has stopped and nothing matters. And the morning is coming back and it’s only 6PM but I can’t fucking stay awake. And dear god the Christmas music is boring into my skull. Hark the herald angels SING. Glory to the newfound KING. And the little cousin gets into my videogames and DEAR GOD KID THE GAME HAS SOUND EFFECTS but it doesn’t matter he goes BRRRRRRRRRMMMMMMMMMMMMM and BLING! BLING! BLING! all the same and peace on earth, good will towards MEN. Something something Da Doo Da HEN.

And it gets later and everyone gets drunk but no one will admit it because we are upstanding citizens. So we sit around and fall asleep and I’m back on the bunkbed and I’m going to die because it can’t stay up there for another night. And that doesn’t start to seem all bad; this is the best day of the year, they say. My head throbs and my heart aches and my eyes have rings around them, but this is the best day of the year. Fall, Fall, Fall, I direct my mental energies towards the upper bunk. And it never does and the minutes turn into hours and my eyes turn to sleep.

But now it’s later and I feel at peace. I’ve run the obstacle course, climbed the wall and dodged the razor wire, I’ve swung on the ropes and walked across the hot coals and here I am. I’m still in one piece and still at one peace and I have my Dreamcast, my books, my CDs, and my gift certificates. And it gives me a sense of completion, of endurance, of survival.

But next year the bunk better fall.

Graphic V.
This was much longer than I originally planned it to be.